Cafes & Carryouts
It might look like a fast-food joint with its signboard menu, plastic plates, and cut-rate prices, but with some of the area’s best Peruvian cooking, it eats like a destination restaurant.
There’s a fine Cubano sandwich ($6.50), good ceviche ($10.95), a winning bowl of creamy shrimp soup with rice and corn ($6.95), and a kind of chicken-salad sandwich ($5.25) in which soft rectangles of potato (Peruvians are potato-mad) substitute for slices of bread. The anticuchos, or beef hearts ($7.95)—three marinated and liberally seasoned hearts grilled on skewers—are the star. An order comes with an onion salad plus half a fried potato. To finish? Alfajores—thin, anise-spiced shortbread cookies sandwiching dense caramel.
Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.
